BROSSARD, Que. — Josh Anderson wouldn’t detail what he suffered after New York Rangers forward Arthur Kaliyev fell on his leg in a game at the Bell Centre on Jan. 19. He just said on Friday, after he and his Montreal Canadiens teammates completed exit meetings with management and collected their belongs at their practice facility, that the collision with Kaliyev spawned the first of multiple injuries he fought through before the season ended in Washington on Wednesday.
The 30-year added he had upper- and lower-body ailments and concluded he’d not have been willing to endure them in a losing cause.
But Anderson didn’t stop playing, and that said a lot about where the Canadiens found themselves in the end — and even more about where they’re heading next.
When Anderson was traded to Montreal in 2020, he vowed never to play through injury again. Coming off shoulder surgery, after trying — and failing — to reasonably contribute over the 26 games of his injury-plagued final season with the Columbus Blue Jackets, it just felt like a losing proposition to him.
But that changed this past January.
Sure, Anderson missed countless practices and morning skates after that collision with Kaliyev. But he didn’t miss a single game due to injury after suffering that first one, and on Friday, he explained why.
“Just the growing pains we’ve been dealing with the last three years of having long summers, that just stuck in my head mentally, and I wanted to do everything that I could to play meaningful hockey,” Anderson said.
The second reason he gave really hit home.
“I knew that we had the recipe for success,” Anderson said.
From Oct. 9 through Dec. 1, his team gave him almost no reason to believe that, accumulating the second-worst record in the NHL and sitting just one point out of last place.
But as Anderson lowered himself into the ice bath following that 5-4 overtime win over the Rangers in January, the Canadiens found themselves just one point out of the second wild-card position in the Eastern Conference. They had come out of the Christmas break on fire, with wins on the road over Florida, Tampa, Las Vegas and Colorado, and followed that stretch up with a 5-1-1 run that saw him decide right then and there that going through much more pain was worth it.
That the Canadiens eventually confirmed it by making the playoffs and giving the Capitals all they could handle — in a series Washington coach Spencer Carbery said shouldn’t have ended in as few as five games — left Anderson relieved.
“I think that we’re in good hands right now with everybody here and things lining up,” he said. “The fanbase has a lot to be excited about the next couple of years, and I think we’re just getting started. I think we’re going to be a team that’s on the map right now…”
Anderson was one of several players suggesting on Friday that the Canadiens are through the rebuilding phase.
He took it a step further, saying, “I think that we’ve built something that we’re ready to win,” and perhaps no player on the team had more license to make such a declaration.
Coach Martin St. Louis constantly referred to Anderson as a culture driver over the final months of the season, and everything Anderson did only affirmed that.
He pushed through pain, and the Canadiens followed — pushing through the dramatic and arduous race to the playoffs to push the Capitals harder than most expected — and together they proved that what’s shared between them can get them to the next level.
“The culture that we have right now is through the roof,” said Anderson. “I can’t say enough good things about what we have in this locker room and what we’ve created as a team.”
Without that, talent goes to waste — like it has in some other markets, where rebuilds have appeared perpetual, if not never-ending.
Anderson wasn’t the only player to brave the pain for the Canadiens to avoid that fate this season.
David Savard said his back gave him ongoing issues after 16 seasons of playing in the NHL, but the one-time Cup winner fought through that and other ailments to not only make the last run of his career worthwhile but also to show his younger, more talented teammates what it takes to win in this league.
Brendan Gallagher, who played through a broken rib in the playoffs, was right there with Savard. So was successor Alex Carrier, who suffered an ankle injury on a hit from Alex Ovechkin before taking a devastating blow from Tom Wilson in Game 4 and never missing a shift in Game 5.
Anderson, Savard, Gallagher, Carrier, and other Canadiens veterans like Christian Dvorak, Joel Armia and Jake Evans created the type of culture that, when coupled with talent, is likely to pay dividends.
And there is talent in Montreal. An abundance of it — with 25-year-old Nick Suzuki, 24-year-old Cole Caufield, 23-year-old Kaiden Guhle, 21-year-olds Juraj Slafkovsky and Lane Hutson, and 19-year-old Ivan Demidov all displaying it while learning from their culture-driving teammates.
It makes the feeling that the students will soon become the masters easy to come by.
Suzuki, Caufield and Guhle are already in transition, and Caufield feels the three youngest students on the Canadiens are right behind them.
“I mean, they’re three really, really special talents that that we got,” he said of Slafkovsky, Hutson and Demidov. “They all drive the group every day, and you know they all have that kind of competitive edge to them, too. They all want to be the best, and I think that that pushes the group even more.”
Anderson and Gallagher are under contract for two more seasons to continue guiding that group, and Savard is hoping to stay with the Canadiens in some other capacity to continue fostering the growth of the young blueliners he helped bring along.
The 34-year-old won’t be on the roster anymore. And it doesn’t appear likely that 29-year-old Dvorak or 31-year-old Armia will, either, with unrestricted free agency looming.
Oliver Kapanen, Owen Beck and Joshua Roy are 21-year-olds who’ll battle each other to replace at least one of those two up front. David Reinbacher is just 20, and he’s hoping to replace Savard on the right side of the defence. And if any of these players are successful, the Canadiens, who were the youngest entrant to this year’s playoffs, are going to get a bit younger.
But that culture Anderson suffered through injury to help drive will help them adjust quickly.
Experience from this season will help the kids already in Montreal, too.
“I think we take that adversity that we went through this year, it’s going to be huge for the group moving forward,” said Guhle. “A lot of the core guys will remember that feeling, remember this feeling now that we have…”
And they will sacrifice like Anderson did, just to experience the ultimate feeling in this sport.
The big power forward played through a lot of pain to help push the Canadiens here, and he and his teammates will expose themselves to much more of it to arrive at their desired destination.
St. Louis, who was named a finalist for the Jack Adams Award on Friday, believes they’ll succeed. On Wednesday, he said the pain of the Canadiens’ first-round loss to the Capitals was “nothing compared to the joy that’s coming,” and he talked about how proud he was to coach a team that battled as hard as his did.
Anderson was one of the leaders in that battle.
His choice to be one said much about where the Canadiens ended up, and it says even more about where they’re headed.
